Yeah, I worked with 60,000 volts on a regular basis.
480 volt 3 phase is nothing to mess with. If one is standing in water which is a good ground, and you came in contact with one phase of 480 with your finger, your internal body temp would raise to over 150 degrees in a couple of seconds which is fatal.
As part of a safety team, I'd put on a demo of 480vac on a hot dog under a plastic cover.
I back wired a transformer so I could produce 480 volts from a 110 volt outlet.
The hot dog would almost explode because it had lots of conductivity.
I came in contact with 480 volts early on in my industrial maintenance career when a supervisor ordered me to to work on a heat treat conveyor when I wanted to back check the breaker that it was open, and he told me to get the fawk on with the job because he already checked the circuit breaker and he had a dozen people in line waiting on my job.
I reached into the conveyor to remove the wiring while laying on the ground, and fortunately for me the 480 went from my finger tip to the back of my hand where it was grounded. Blew a chunk of meat out of the back of my hand and felt like I had 60 people a second hitting me with a sledge hammer.
It took a week to get over the muscle soreness, and the scar still rides with me today.
I took the liberty to search for some high voltage facts produced by OSHA in the 480 volt range, and here is the link.
Be advised this info deals in milliamps. Not the full amperage of the bollards at bricktown.
Another tidbit of info. If your breaker doesn't trip, or the GFCI does not trip, you are at the full mercy of the power plant supplying the power until the conductor feeding the faulty breaker melts down.
I was involved in a situation just like this once when a 1000 ampere breaker faulted to short and the company had fire flying out of every outlet in the facility be it 110 volts or 480. The damage to the electrical system cost over 1 million dollars to repair and a week of down time in service to the customers.
THE DANGERS OF ELECTRICAL SHOCK
Severity of Electrical Shock
The severity of injury from electrical shock depends on the amount of electrical amperage (current) and the length of time the current passes through the body. For example, 1/10 of an ampere (amp) of electricity going through the body for just 2 seconds is enough to cause death.
The amount of internal current a person can withstand and still be able to control the muscles of the arm and hand can be less than 10 milliamperes (milliamps or mA).
Currents above 10 mA can paralyze or "freeze" muscles. When this "freezing" happens, a person is no longer able to release a tool, wire, or other object. In fact, the electrified object may be held even more tightly, resulting in longer exposure to the shocking current. For this reason, hand-held tools that give a shock can be very dangerous.
If you can't let go of the tool, current continues through your body for a longer time, which can lead to respiratory paralysis (the muscles that control breathing cannot move). You stop breathing for a period of time.
People have stopped breathing when shocked with currents from voltages as low as 49 volts. Usually, it takes about 30 mA of current to cause respiratory paralysis.
Currents greater than 75 mA may cause ventricular fibrillation (very rapid, ineffective heartbeat). This condition will cause death within a few minutes unless a special device called a defibrillator is used to save the victim. Heart paralysis occurs at 4 amps, which means the heart does not pump at all. Tissue is burned with currents greater than 5 amps.
The table in module 2 section 2 shows what usually happens for a range of currents (lasting one second) at typical household voltages. Longer exposure times increase the danger to the shock victim. For example, a current of 100 mA applied for 3 seconds is as dangerous as a current of 900 mA applied for a fraction of a second (0.03 seconds).
The muscle structure of the person also makes a difference. People with less muscle tissue are typically affected at lower current levels. Even low voltages can be extremely dangerous because the degree of injury depends not only on the amount of current but also on the length of time the body is in contact with the circuit.
